The Evening Standard’s G20 bricks
So, according to Sky News…
Police said they were pelted with missiles believed to include bottles as they tried to save [Ian Tomlinson's] life.
Eye-witnesses speaking to the Guardian said…
There were a lot of people around him trying to help him and asking for medics. “One or maybe two plastic bottles were thrown, but it was by people further back in the crowd who did not know what was going on.”
Is that really ‘pelted’? As in ‘to strike or assail repeatedly with or as if with blows or missiles; bombard’? I know what I think.
The inimitable Evening Standard went one better. Earlier today it was saying the ‘police were pelted with bricks‘ as they helped the dying man…
The story, along with the bricks, has now gone, changed without explanation as is the case with these things. Unfortunately I neglected to take a screen grab when I first spotted the original. But the URL on the Evening Standard’s website still tells the tale (click for the full effect)…
So, where did the bricks come from and where did they go? Did the police make them up or the Evening Standard? Can anyone tell me if this made the print edition? You can’t make that go away with a click of a mouse.
Update April 3: Many thanks to OriginalWireman for the scan of pages 6 and 7 from yesterday’s Evening Standard.
There’s a readable PDF version of the article here. Apparently it was in all editions.
BenSix’s Accidental Death of an Anarchist part one and part two ties it all together.
Posted on April 2nd, 2009 at 6:10pm under Culture, media and sport
I have a copy of the West End Final edition of the Evening Standard in front of me. The front page story second paragraph opens with ‘police were bombarded with bricks, bottles and planks of wood’.
The detailed report on page six, though, can only name ‘fruit and paint bombs’, and ‘one officer was struck with a pole’.
My guess is that the front page was pre-written. And, y’know, bricks and bottles, it just sounds right for a riot.
It reminds me of the Daily Star’s report of the 1994 Criminal Justice Bill riot in Hyde Park where ‘railings were used as spears’. Sounds plausible for a riot in a park. The fact that the railings are in squared welded sections, fit perhaps for use as small ladders, needn’t get in the way of what makes a good riot write-up.
incidentally, I recommend this footage of the police trying to start a riot on Bishopsgate last night. Just like their incursions into the climate camps at Heathrow and Kingsnorth, the crowd didn’t behave like a textbook mob. They stood their ground, held their hands in the air to show they were unarmed and chanted ‘this is not a riot’. Powerful stuff.
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BBC eyewitness report of what happened:
“I saw him collapse and smash his head and then he was lying there with his eyes wide open. And then a guy in the audience had a megaphone and shouted “police, we need a medic”, and within seconds the police had a team of eight people ran forward. And yeah, there was a couple of people throwing bottles and bricks but there was a few other anarchists saying “no, stop this, time out, time out”. So within seconds there were no more missiles so the police were with him for a good like two or three minutes before they dragged him back. But as they were dragging him back, then the missiles began.”
You see, the police WERE being pelted when they were helping this man.
Well, it’s the only eyewitness account out of quite a few I’ve read that mentions bricks. I take it you’re saying it outweighs the rest? Or do we look at things on balance? Even the ES piece doesn’t mention bricks beyond its headline.
Can you also give me your definition of ‘pelted’.
And if the BBC says an eyewitness said so, it MUST be true.
I’ll remember that, LFAT.
Indeed. Who, for example, said this:
There are many many many reasons why I now feel that your entire organisation needs reform, not least because of the ridiculously overt liberal bias that your news reporting continues to suffer from. [...] It’s time to break up the BBC and get some high quality and politically neutral news reporting again.
Go on. You’ll never guess.
Is that really ‘pelted’? As in ‘to strike or assail repeatedly with or as if with blows or missiles; bombard’? I know what I think.
Hmm. Are you thinking “gosh, I made a bit of a fool of myself back then, looks like people were throwing stuff at the police after all; better start quibbling over the dictionary definition and arguing for a BSI definition of the minimum number of projectiles for an assault to qualify as a ‘pelting’ rather than, say, a ’sprinking’ or a ’showering’”?
And has it not occurred to you, between your snide tone, that this story is changing at every telling and I’m trying to follow it rather than take the establishment view? If a photo or video emerges of those police with so much as one half-brick falling on them, I’ll publish it and hold my hands up.
Not really. What occurs to me is that your original line was to reprint, approvingly, an eyewitness statement that said nothing had been thrown at the police helping the casaulty at all. Then you got pelted (as it were) with examples of other eyewitnesses who said that actually there were a few people throwing stuff at the police helping the casualty.
Now you’re reduced to quibbling about the minimum number of bottles required to constitute a ‘pelting’, and demanding not just eyewitness accounts but actual video evidence of a brick in flight towards a policeman. It would have to be video, I assume; a still photo would allow you to claim “well, we can see the brick’s in the air, but how do we know it’s headed for a policeman?”
Ajay, it doesn’t smack of desperation at all. The definition of words used in reports is extremely important. The same group could be ‘a lively crowd’ or ‘a baying mob’; our picture is formed by the nuances.
‘Pelted’ clearly implies many missiles, something of a barrage. This is very different to the one or two items cited by eyewitnesses.
It’s all a bit reminscent of the Sun and Hillsborough, isn’t it?
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Not just the Sun and Hillsborough, which did immediately jump to mind, but also Jean Charles de Menezes. After he was murdered, a whole bunch of ‘eyewitnesses’ came forward to tell the press that he was wearing a bulking jacket, that there were wires protruding from his jacket, and that he ran away from the police and vaulted the barriers. Given that none of this was true, but was extremely useful in the management of the story, I’ve got my doubts about the status of those eyewitnesses. And I have my doubts about this one, too.
What next? Will we read that he has been posthumously [falsely] accused of rape in a tabloid, in the manner that JCdM was?
And as far as police public order policing goes, never believe the BBC – admirable though I find it in most regards. One word: Orgreave.
Interview with two eyewitnesses: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTCwQt3zBq8
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